For decades there has been much talk about capturing carbon from coal-fired power stations. So far projects have failed to come up with a viable solution. Coal is dirty and it remains so. Nuclear is more realistic alternative but it is dangerous.

A new attempt is about to be made in India by Carbon Clean Solutions (CCSL). Claims are being made of capture costs as low $30.00 a tonne, half of that achieved so far in other tests. Pollution is also claimed to be reduced to zero. Such figures are obviously totally baseless.

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Reduction of carbon by salt and amines to soda ash is the method to be used. Soda ash is used for fertilizer and cement. There is more than one system. The list includes solvent, membrane and negative emission.

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The UK has cut funding in its research program. President Trump of the US has indicated he will expand coal power stations as there is no global warming caused by pollution - he believes. Countries are not acting in a positive manner to reduce the deleterious affect of coal.

Turning carbon dioxide in carbon monoxide may seem like a silly thing to do, considering carbon monoxide is a deadly poison. However, if this can be done easily and cheaply it could reduce pollution: it is used to produce fuels and plastics.

A catalyst has been made that does the conversion into carbon dioxide. It does the task rapidly. Last year the world's first commercial capture process at a coal power plant began operating. Waste gases were bubbled up through vats of amine solution. This is very expensive though.

The new process became possible when it was made to work in water. Electrocalysts have been used for two decades to take an oxygen molecule from a CO2 atom. As it now safely functions in water a whole new horizon opens up to clean up the environment.

conversion occurs at a rate of 290,000 atoms a second, an improvement of 26 times the pre-water process. Little maintenance of the system is needed. It has only been done in the lab so far. Plans are afoot to try it out at a coal power plant.

Conservation has always been ideologically polarized in Australia. There are those who seem to want to stop all development to prevent any deleterious change and those who want to rape the environment in search of the holy dollar - and ne'er the twain shall meet! With the Greens now gaining a handful of seats in the Senate they have voting power beyond their number. All shades of national government will have to compromise. Even state governments are not free of the Green "scourge", as they see it.

There is an issue with a planned coalmine in Queensland, the Carmichael mine near Bowen. Former premier Campbell Newman was fully supportive of the development and showed an intention to introduce new legislation to achieve it. This has changed. Labor is not so enamored with new projects at any cost. This is the case even though the Greens do not have the balance of power in the Queensland parliament.

Like medication you get from your doctor - there are always side effects. The natural environment will certainly be damaged in some way by a new mine. Objectors say the black-throated finch which is already threatened will be wiped out. Even the Waxy Cabbage Palm could be decimated. The evergreen problem of changes in water flow means that Doongmabulla Springs will probably dry up.

Claims by the investor Adani that a 30,999ha site will be set aside for the bird are not based on solid theory. The birds have access to that area already. And land used in the development will be taken away. Black-throated finch prefer their home ground and have never been known to travel to new areas. Raving about economic benefits will not change the views of ardent greens.

It is proposed that natural gas be used instead of coal for electric power generation. The national climate summit put a deadline of 2012 for this to happen with the dirtiest power station, Hazlewood. Environment Victoria took up the challenge saying that natural gas with renewable energy resources could reduce Hazlewood's pollution by 14.4 million tonnes to just 1.8. Wind generation would gradually replace natural gas.

The claim is exceedingly optimistic. Too much faith is placed in wind generation despite the fact that electricity production by this means has peaked in northern Europe and it still does not make a profit. Beyond Zero Emissions is even more optimistic. Its plan aims to end Hazlewood's use of coal by 2013. Failure to reduce emissions means it could be closed.

The future looks good for natural gas production with gas being obtained from coal seams and 20 gas power plants being planned. Natural gas is not really clean though. Indeed, leakage of methane gas occurs. Replacing coal power generation with gas as a temporary measure is a mistake. What is the point of wasting millions of dollars in investment on the premise that something better will come along?

The best way to go in the short term is to build solar thermal power sites alongside existing coal power stations. Note that solar thermal only produces electricity during the day. A final solution will undoubtedly be tidal generation because the moon continues to circle the earth making oceans rise and fall day after day.

It seems it is not only nuclear power that pollutes the earth with radioactive substances. For centuries coal and oil production has brought thousands of tons of polluted material from beneath the planet to the surface. Further processing concentrates it even more. Apparently the sludge is left lying around and is not isolated from the population. For every barrel of oil pumped up into storage, ten barrels of polluted water is dragged up as well. Uranium and radium occur naturally below ground. In the US plastic pipes used in the production process were given to kindergartens to make playground equipment.

The coal and oil industry has known for many years about the problem but has kept very quiet about it. While nuclear power stations are closely monitored, limits are set high for coal and oil which allows producers to pollute at will. Tests for radioactivity on dumps of sludge give readings 700 times higher than clean areas.

With new housing estates being built on top of discarded polluted sludge it is only a matter of time before a disaster takes place. When the general population finds out the truth about this there will be street protests across the globe.

It is predicted that the use of solar and wind power will rapidly increase as costs falls. There has been an improvement in the efficiency of wind turbines. Solar panels also put out more power at a lower cost.

Australians have strongly adopted solar power while governments offer high payments for electricity going back into the system. Making an end date of 2026 of such overpayment was a silly idea. It is too far ahead for future governments to guarantee this "lopsided" subsidy that only helps the wealthy. The financial burden has been pushed onto the elderly.

Solar power has hidden costs. Power surges burn out televisions and computers. New ones must be purchased. Many consumers are saying someone has to fix this. Considering solar power generation will fluctuate throughout the day with this is near impossible.

Frank Calabria, CEO of Origin Energy, favors the elimination of all subsidies on clean energy. This indicates a probable back down considering Origin is the largest investor in wind farms. Coal remains the cheapest form of power production in Australia. This economic advantage will continue. Whether new calls for nuclear power are supported is unknown are present.

The National Sustainability Council presented its long awaited report called the Sustainable Australia 2013: Conversations with the Future. This is the first of a series of biennial papers to advise the government about the state of the economy vis-a-vis the environment.

Full of optimism, the newly founded council said the future looked bright if we changed to building sustainable communities. However, the type of community needed is far more radical than envisaged by the council. Despite Australia having many of the most livable cities in the world we need to start planning immediately for the kind of balanced society of the future.

Oil will not be around forever and coal is too polluting to be used at such high rates. This means individuals driving around in five seater cars will not be possible. Electricity use is skyrocketing with Internet cloud servers and hungry mobiles gobbling up tonnes of coal and oil in power stations. Future cities will have to be designed with houses laid out in a manner that allows public transport to easily be used to get to work. Little is said about this now, but it will be in the future.

Somehow workers will have to be able to get from side roads to main roads where buses or vehicles on rails can travel. This will involve many more stops than at present and it will take longer to get to places of employment. We could see the return of bicycles or low-powered slow speed electric vehicles.

A place without car ownership will be an odd place to people of the current era. Nonetheless, it will have to happen eventually. Modern cities are car dependent. If an economic crisis stops the flow of oil these cities will die.

It seems that we have pushed the peak oil period further forward by obtaining coal seam gas from just about everywhere we look. Fracking does damage the environment and the current freedom for the gas companies could be curtailed.

When peak oil is reached the impact on Australia's rural areas will be significant. Supplies of oil will fall and prices for the scarce commodity will rise. Farmers use advanced machinery to sow, plant and harvest food crops. If governments set priorities then agriculture will have to be given precedence over private use. Transport will be next in line.

There are two aspects of transport. Movement of food is very important, but as people will not be able to freely use their cars they will opt for public transport to get to their places of employment.

People will have to live with limited mobility as they did in the days of the horse and buggy. A day out will be a luxury. Economies will go into recession as trade slows down. Perhaps people will turn to other sources of energy like wood. This will not be sustainable. Stricter and clearer laws will be needed to control activities. Rationing will not be a choice. It will be absolutely necessary.

Energy created by lasers could be the way of the future. Researchers have used models and they show that lasers can produce "cold" energy by nuclear fusion. A new generation of fast, powerful lasers makes this possible. To achieve fusion a short, carefully controlled pulse is required. The pulse target is hydrogen and boron. Creating neutrons is not the objective because they cause radioactivity.

The Australian research is duplicating what is going on at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, but they are using deuterium-tritium fuel.

A single laser pulse can generate 500 times more electricity than all the power stations in the US. At first the research team did not believe hydrogen-boron fuel would work. However, models indicated that it was only ten times more difficult than deuterium-tritium. For it to work the laser pulse must be clean, that is, lasting only a million, millionth of a second. Optical energy is then converted to mechanical energy.

It is not commonly known but coal power stations actually emit radioactivity - it is a problem in Germany where they are considering burying polluted material. Producing energy by laser pulsing hydrogen-boron creates less radioactivity than using deuterium-tritium. Coal generation is very dirty compared to hydrogen-boron. The waste product is helium gas. Hydrogen-boron is also plentiful. Team leader Professor Hora say it could be some time before the research becomes reality.

Price is already changing consumer behavior in regard to carbon. However, price signals can make people do the wrong thing. Because electricity has risen sharply in Australia over the last two years some people are going back to old wood burning appliances for heating and cooking.

Burning wood pushes more carbon into the atmosphere. It is just swapping wood for coal. Demand for fuel timber has risen 30 per cent this winter. It isn't cheap either. A tonne delivered to your door costs $350 and lasts about six weeks. More new fireplaces are being purchased, so there is a trend.

Sitting over a fireplace is bad for your health. Pollutants are drawn into the lungs. It is like smoking cigarettes. Over a year a wood heater produces more dangerous particles than five diesel trucks. Already 6 per cent of people in Sydney use wood burners and this number is rising.

Ian Mcfarlane the Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources says Australia should still consider nuclear power. He must be off his bonnet if he thinks Australians will have a bar of this dangerous form of electricity generation. If a Coalition government seriously suggested a move to nuclear energy people would be protesting in the streets. Then there is the "not in my backyard" syndrome. No community would accept such a potentially toxic plant in their area.

For Mr Mcfarlane's information lessons have been learned from the impossible situation in Japan where there in no solution to the problem. Australians do not want nuclear and will never want nuclear. Japan's economy is severely damaged and the Japanese will have chronic illnesses into the future. Much of the country will have to be fenced off, never to be used by humans ever again.

Australians like everyone else in the world will have to pay much more for electricity as systems of clean coal power generation are ultimately adopted and expensive solar, wind and tidal methods are in general operation. This will happen as countries are dragged screaming and shouting to the table to sign up for carbon pricing. Increasing climactic damage including hits on economies from bad weather will put strong pressure on countries to comply. Countries will put up barriers against products from other economies that do not have low emission policies.

The world is in a tight corner and people are far too optimistic. Thinking that carbon pollution will cure itself is not scientific fact. Only a fool would hang onto the notion that nothing is wrong. The poles are thawing out and that is fact. Polar bears are dwindling in number as their traditional frozen feeding grounds get warmer. Butterflies that used to stay on in winter in southern England have moved north to colder climes. Those species that stay are getting larger.

Despite coal power stations being the main culprit more are being built to meet Mankind's increasing demand. Much is said about nuclear power stations holding the key to a "clean" future. Used uranium is going around Europe at this very moment without finding a home in any country. Where will this dangerous product be put in the future? Unless it is blasted into space toward the sun there is no where for it to go. France gets more than 80 percent of its electric power from nuclear means, but this is the country with the used uranium problem.

Even some scientists say the carbon footprint of nuclear power will be reduced to zero. This is hogwash. If you ignore nuclear waste everything looks good. Include it and it all looks very bad indeed. Nuclear power isn't cheap. Building a nuclear power plant requires long term planning. Safe guards are costly. Their useful life is also limited. Coal plants can stay in operation for much longer.

Within twenty years all 25 of China's new nuclear plants will come online. The world will be a militants' paradise with used uranium for sale on the open market. The consequences will be catastrophic. Saying there is no carbon price is absolute rubbish. If a bomb goes off there will be plenty of pollution.